Getting all greasy was how I spent my holiday! 
Last I left off, the AE86 was back together but the FX wouldn’t start. Oh, here’s a pic of the crossmember and rack back in. The rest of it is still pretty crusty, but check out that clean crossmember! I’m going to have to go back and tighten that hydraulic hose hitting, I crawled under the other day after test driving and it’s leaking fluid onto the nice clean crossmember already! Continue reading ‘How I Spent My Festivus’
Archive for the 'car' Category
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Time to catch up on the Corollas. They’re finally both registered and safetied, but still neither are running. The FX needs new transaxle output shaft seals, and power steering reinstalled but it’s out in the driveway making working on it difficult with the recent psychotic rains. So working on the AE86. Picked up a reman steering rack and set about removing the old one.
12-01-07
The rack is bolted to the front crossmember and I decided to take out the whole thing. I’ve heard it’s possible to take out without removing the crossmember, but it was all such a spoogy mess from the leaking p/s and brake fluids that taking it all out to clean would be a good idea. It’s actually a fairly simple ordeal. 
Disconnect the steering shaft u-joint, unbolt & pop tie rod ends, unbolt steering arms from bottom of shock strut, unbolt lower control arm tension rods, unbolt anti-sway bar ends, remember to drain & disconnect the p/s hoses, unbolt front engine mounts, support engine, then finally unbolt the four main crossmember bolts and drop the assembly. Hopefully not literally. Continue reading ‘Not So MightyVac’
A month later, the new Sears/Enersys Diehard Platinum battery in the FJ80 is still cranking like it wants the starter to spin the crankshaft out the front of the engine. I swear the the starter has never turned that fast ever! Looks like this one is a winner. I’ll post an update in a year unless it goes bad earlier and I get all pissed off and rant about it…
Original post here
Wow, I completely ignored the cars today. Except for going outside and looking under them. Sheesh, leakyness. The FX is leaking from one of the transaxle output seals. The AE86 is no longer leaking from the steering because all the fluid is gone, but I see it looks like it’s leaking from the transmission output also. Well, I’ll just ignore them for a little longer, gotta take care of the snowboard!
Well, the parking brake is still acting strange, the tightness changes randomly, but it works. It was good enough to pass safety so everything’s all legal now. Still lots of work to do, but at least all the paperwork is taken care of, whew.
Last night decided to try & fix the parking brake on the FX. Went over to the donor and pulled off the piston assembly. Something seems to be wrong with the cylinder adjuster on it, doesn’t move. The new FX, other than munched boots, and a missing lock pin, seems to work fine. Odd. I start messing with it and finally figure out that the problem is that the brake cable is too tight! The brake needs to release tension all the way in order for the self adjuster to ratchet and… self adjust. Whew, easy fix, and while I was at it I switched rubber boot from the donor. Looks like Saturday will attempt safety again!
Darn, I had hoped to have the cars legal this weekend and even join in a bike ride. It’s not like I don’t enjoy working on cars, but working on these two cars for the past days kind of wore me down so I didn’t do anything with them tonight.
Anyway, going back to the weekend, after the Saturday fun, I went out to take a closer look at the power steering of the AE86. Cleaned off spooge and ran the car for a bit. Strange, the new hose connections look fine. Don’t see any leakage at all, I figure if the high pressure line is leaking should be seeing some good spray. Continue reading ‘Be Cautious of the Car-ma Passed to You’
After all of Saturdays running around getting car stuff done, turns out only the AE86 got all legal. So I decided to go ahead and drive it to Wayland’s for dinner tonight. The transmission was making it’s whining sounds, but everything else seemed alright. Some burning oil smell that seemed to go away, I attributed that to left over brake fluid & power steering fluid that dripped on exhaust manifold burning off. This engine was really made for right hand drive. On the LHD we have here, the brake cylinder & P/S lines all end up on the same side as the hot exhaust. Anyway, things seemed to be going alright, although the burning oil smell would come and go. I got to Kalihi area on the H-1 when I saw that I was trailing big clouds of smoke out the back! Holy chrome, I pulled off the freeway onto Waikamilo and pulled into gas station. Popped the hood & took a look around. Either the fitting for the replacement p/s hose I installed wasn’t tight enough, was leaking, or was leaking somewhere else. It looks like it was spraying p/s fluid all over the place, which would collect and drip onto the manifold, producing the Spy Hunter (come on, you don’t remember that old arcade video game?) smoke screen. People sure stop following behind you in a hurry! So I turned around and nursed it back home. I laid down quite a few more screens, but made it home ok.
Weeks after verifying that the FJ80 didn’t have some kind of electrical problem causing the battery to drain, I finally got around to going to Sears and picking up a new Enersys-built Diehard Platinum battery. Hot or cold, the current draw was below 10-miliamps which was well within spec, and the old Optima was only putting out 12.3-12.5 volts. I’ve grown dissatisfied with Optima batteries. My first one lasted almost as long as my original factory Toyota Yuasa open battery (which lasted about 7-years with maintenance!), but my second Optima went flat in less than 5-years. Continue reading ‘Tons of Fun’
That was quick & easy, the connector for the alternator wasn’t on good. Pluged it in good, cranked up the car, 14V baby! And while I was looking for wiring gremlins, looked at why the fans were constantly on. Yet another problem all the FXs I’ve had suffered. Looked over the FSM. Finally found it, doh, now I remember! All my FX’s also had A/C that was disabled/removed, and in so doing a pressure switch was either unplugged or chopped out. This switch runs in series with the fan temp switch so if it’s simply removed, the fan gets stuck on. The proper way to do it is to jumper it, or like how I did on previous and on this one for now is to just take the pressure switch and plug it in and leave it dangling. Aaaah, silence of no fans with cold engine. So wow, finally both cars are ready! The AE86 has a leaky brake master, but that’s easily fixed and can pass safety even without.
And after messing with all this alternator stuff, I just realized I am the man of alternators. Allen installed a new one into this FX, and stuck the old one in the trunk of the AE86. In all likelyhood that alternator is probably still good. I have the one in the 2nd FX, and one on the original FX block. So I have 4 FX alternators. Maybe if I took one of my bikes and hooked a belt to all of them I could power my house during a power outage….